Teleology & Efficient Causation in Biology

If you want to know what a college is supposed to be, spend some time on the third floor of the Tech Center at NSU. On Friday Professor Schaff and I sat in my office discussing the difference between the concepts of the cosmos and of the universe and the limits on legitimate teleological explanations in biology. A third colleague of ours joined in the discussion and, in effect, so did a fourth: the cosmos/universe distinction was put forth by someone who was not present.

As I understand the first question, both terms stand for the whole of things in space and time (excluding alternative universes or a God who stands outside space and time). To call this whole a cosmos is to imply that it is ordered and coherent in the same way as a beating human heart is ordered and coherent. To call the whole a universe is to avoid any such suggestion. The universe may be a disordered mess without any hierarchy or coherence of any kind. I apologize to my absent colleague if I got this wrong.

I am not entirely comfortable with the terminology. The term universe can also imply coherent order just as the term university does. However, I accept the distinction and I think it is important, though I will not tip my hand on this one. The suggestion was made that a cosmos has to involve teleology, which is to say that its order must be understood in terms of the ends or goals which that order serves. At that point I stated that teleology is indeed involved in biological explanations.

There the discussion shifted to a more specific question: taking Darwinian theory seriously, what counts as a telos or goal in organic activities? It was put forth that survival is a Darwinian telos. I argued to the contrary and what follows is my argument after a little thinking.

Aristotle distinguished four basic kinds of explanations, of which only two concern us here. Consider the flight of an arrow from the bow to the target. An efficient explanation goes like this: the energy imparted by the bow string to the arrow was sufficient to carry the arrow in the right direction and far enough to reach the bulls eye. A teleological explanation focuses on the intentions of the archer: he hit the target because that is what he was aiming at. The two kinds of explanations are not in any way at odds with one another; they are simply answers to different questions.

Although this position is not uncontroversial in the philosophy of biology, I think that teleological explanations are entirely appropriate and indeed essential in biology. The growth of an animal from its original cell is an end-directed process. Countless subordinate processes are constantly being redirected toward the telos: a mature adult. Likewise, when a bull elk pursues a cow in heat, his actions are guided by a pre-programed goal. The philosopher of biology Ernst Mayr called such program-guided processes teleomatic.

Now for the question: is survival among the teloi, if not the telos, of biological processes? I say no. First, survival is purely subordinate to successful reproduction in Darwinian biology. Secondly, the bull is neither trying to survive nor trying to produce offspring. What he is trying to do is mate. That is the telos of his amorous actions. Okay, but isn't reproduction the reason for his actions? Yes, but this is an efficient rather than a teleological explanation.

An efficient explanation begins with some action or event and works backward in time to articulate the causes that produced it. The arrow flew because first the string pushed it. The string pushed it because first the archer pulled it back and then let it go. It doesn't matter where you start in time, with the arrow, the string, or the biceps, efficient explanation works backwards in time.

A teleological explanation proceeds forward in time from the action to the goal that the action was intended to achieve. The archer releases the string at time T1 because he intended the arrow to reach the target at T2.

The bull's amorous pursuit is explained teleologically by the goal that he is trying to achieve in the near future: mating. If we could read the elk's DNA coherently, we would find a set of genetic information adding to a schema that guides mating behavior, predator avoidance, etc. What we wouldn't find is language coding for survival of the individual or the species.

How do survival and successful reproduction figure in as explanations? The bull behaves as he does because his father behaved that way. Every existing organism is the offspring of an unbroken line of successful breeders. Natural selection is efficient causation, not teleological causation.

This distinction is rather important. Critics of Darwinism frequently argue that it is brutish because it reduces all values to the mere struggle to survive and reproduce. This is flat wrong. Fitness for survival and reproduction are not values in any sense in the theory. They are efficient forces that explain how the forms of the various organisms emerge and are sustained.

I think that I and my colleagues came to some agreement on this, but as a result of that conversation I have clarified my own thoughts. If you want to know what a college really is, that would be it.

Comments

[Boris Borcic]

I guess this is contained in the assumption of a teleological cause, but I feel your call on "what the bull really wants" boils down to an methodologically deficient invitation to just read the bull's mind.

[larry kurtz]

A nurse friend tends to neonates that often fit in the palm of her own tiny hand: babies that would have perished just ten years ago yet survive today because of advances in technology.

Your phallocentric worldview is telling, KB. Had your discussion included a woman, as the debate between VP Biden and his unwitting opponent did, the conclusions at which you arrived might have been quite different.

Include a few feminists in your twitter feeds fellers.

[Bill Fleming]

Somehow the cosmos has conspired, either by design or by coincidence to bring you to this moment, KB. And also, it seems to persuade, you to care which. This is what passes as "rutting season" in philosophy departments, I suppose. ;^)

"A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one."

—Wallace Stevens
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stevens-13ways.html

[Ken Blanchard]

Boris: no. I do not presume to know "what it is like" to be an elk. I simply employ the "intentional stance" as an interpretive device. The best way to understand the behavior of the bull is to assume that he was up to something. Daniel Dennett has defended this device, adequately in my view.

Bill: your puzzling comment is at least partially redeemed by your Stevens quote. Stevens was perhaps the most anti-philosophical poet since Aristophanes and perhaps the most anti-Platonic writer since Nietzsche. For precisely that reason, he is a treasure to all who love philosophy and Plato.

I am curious: do you really not care to think about how the cosmos produced a Blanchard and a Fleming? I am not offended by either of your suggested alternatives, but I would certainly like to know which is right.

Do you really think that the exchange described above was a rut? I thought it was a conversation. I think that ideas are worth examining and I suppose that it is possible to care about the truth apart from one's desire for self-gratification. I would have guessed that the same were true of you, but perhaps I must guess again.

[Donald Pay]

The problem with sitting around an ivory tower trying to piece this together is that it ignores the biology of the elk. A bull elk comes into rut as a result of pheromones put out by the cows as they come into estrous. Until then the bull is content to just survive in its bachelor herds, eating grass mostly. It could care less about some teleos mating. Only when the female-produced pheromones stimulates increased testosterone levels do bulls begin to engage in rutting behavior. There will be a lot of contretemps as the males form and defend harems. Besides the high testosterone levels, males generally do not eat during rut, which makes them all the more cantankerous, not to mention affecting future survival. The key for males is to inseminate as many females as possible as fast as possible. But there is a problem. Some or maybe most females, due to age or nutritional state, may not produce calves. So, a male might be better served by having fewer females who are mature and in good nutritional state, and leave some other dumb or young bull to mate with the leftovers, who will produce fewer or even no calves. As in all things involving sex, there are some genetic components, some environmental components and a good deal of chance. Things get complicated real fast out in nature, where ivory tower teleos doesn't hold much sway.

[Bill Fleming]

Are you familiar with the blade if grass effect, KB? A golfer hits a ball onto a green and it lands on a specific blade of grass. From the blades perspective, what were the odds of being the one hit? Astronomical. But there it is anyway. A Fleming blade of grass with a lump on his head. And from golfer KB's perspective? Well, no big deal. It had to land somewhere.

Yes, I think about those things too, Ken. But I've sort of slowly warmed up to the idea that I'll never know if I'm right.

[Ridahoan]

I think this 'efficient causation' is a useful concept in describing the apparent teleology of evolution. I've just tried to explain the outcome of natural selection as simply the results of the rules of continuity, rather than the tautology 'survival of the fittest.' I'll try this 'efficient causation' next time, though ... without motive, it doesn't seem like one has a root cause, and without a root cause, how do you map a linear causal chain? Isn't gravity, the resistance of air molecules, the growth of the sinews in the shank of the deer before these backed the bow, the preening of the flicker that grew the tail feathers before they fletched the shaft also causes of the flight of the arrow? Don't we have a causual net then, and probably boundless? Is it cause at all?

[Bill Fleming]

I think this perhaps runs tangent to your topic here, KB. Or maybe parallel?
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/reasons-matter-when-intuitions-dont-object/

[Bill Fleming]

p.s. regarding the "rut" observation, it was just to say that's what philosophers do... i.e. their nature.

[larry kurtz]

Risk and sex:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-real-story-risk/201210/sex-and-the-single-primate

[Ken Blanchard]

Bill: thanks for the clarification on "rut". It saves me from having to pee on Dr. Schaff's carpet, or yours.

I was not familiar with the your "blade if grass" terminology, but the point is very familiar. However, the role of chance in things was not part of my discussion above. The questions of whether you or I came to be by chance or by design is quite distinct from the question of whether the whole is coherent and ordered.

Quantum theory involves chance in the rigorously metaphysical sense. Still, the phenomena, if very strange, are coherent enough to mathematically model and even conceptually model. By contrast, water molecules in the air are presumably obedient to deterministic laws; yet a particular cloud is fundamentally incoherent. It's chaotic nature defies modeling or even recognition. If the very same cloud appeared twice, one could not recognize that such had taken place.

Is the whole a coherent cosmos? Science certainly suggests so. Does that coherence indicate an intelligent designer, as natural theology would have it? That, as we say down south, is a whole 'nuther question.

Likewise, natural selection is a coherent process that explains precisely how the challenge of odds can be overcome by evolutionary history. The question above is not what role chance plays in that history, though it certainly plays a large role. The question is whether evolution is a teleological process. I explain why I think that it is not.

[Ken Blanchard]

Donald: if you are going to accuse me of ignoring the biology of the elk due to my high altitude in the ivory tower, you might at least offer some reason why your musings on it are relevant to the question under discussion. You do not.

I would point out that the biologists dwell in the tower along with myself. Fortunately, when I have such discussions with them, the questions do not go over their heads.

[Ken Blanchard]

Ridahoan: thanks for the comment. You are quite right to that the list of efficient causes involved in something as simple as an arrow's flight is a very long list. When modeling something like that, a physicist will typically reduce the list to a manageable set operating within a manageable timeline. That means that the model will be necessarily imprecise, but perhaps close enough. Almost all physical science works like that.

I would add that a deterministic physics assumes that the complete set of efficient causes is a sufficient set: it adds up perfectly to determine the effect. I am not convinced that determinism is a useful concept.

[Bill Fleming]

"A thing or action has an intrinsic finality when it is for none other than its own sake. For example, one might try to be happy simply for the sake of being happy, and not for the sake of anything outside of that.
Since the Novum Organum of Francis Bacon teleological explanations in science tend to be deliberately avoided because whether they are true or false is argued to be beyond the ability of human perception and understanding to judge.[2] Some disciplines, in particular within evolutionary biology, are still prone to use language that appears teleological when they describe natural tendencies towards certain end conditions; but these arguments can almost always be rephrased in non-teleological forms."

-- From the Wiki entry on 'telelogical'.

[Bill Fleming]

Still trying to ferret out your point. Perhaps it is that coherence implies intention? And your position is that it doesn't? Mario Livio has a fun read on this in his book 'Is God a Mathematician?'

[Ken Blanchard]

Bill: I very explicitly avoided saying that coherence implies intention, at least on a cosmic scale. Even if you suppose that the solar system came into being without the benefit of any intention at all, the movement of the planets is still coherent and ordered.

[carpinteyrocuq]

? Spare-time activities. Priced 2007 coming from Kunati Training books Activity # 3